


Automated Storage Grian

by Leopardmask



Category: Hermitcraft
Genre: Crack, Gen, Minor Claustrophobia, Non-human hermits - Freeform, doll!Grian, ignores/predates the base swap, mini main character, season 7, what happens if you could carry a player in your inventory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 10:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30087627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: Grian's sneaking around Mumbo's base again.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 91





	Automated Storage Grian

Grian ducked into a patch of tall grass, hoping his red sweater wouldn’t give him away, as  Mumbo swooped by. Grian was in his main, smaller doll body, sneaking around Mumbo’s base, scouting for ways to mess with him later. This small form made hiding much easier; he giggled to himself as Mumbo swept right past without a second glance. Grian was pretty sure he hadn’t even been that well-hidden.

There wasn’t much up on the upper level for him to do, so he wandered around, waiting for Mumbo to leave the lower levels. In the meantime, he admired Mumbo’s attempts at making the grassy areas look more natural and varied.

Finally, Mumbo shot upward, landing in a Nether portal and vanishing. Grian rubbed what passed for his hands together and jumped down, angling himself to flop into a landing on the storage room floor. The fall didn’t hurt him; impacts like that rarely did, in this form.

The grass was even taller and thicker down here, oddly. Grian pushed through it, looking for something to climb up onto, when suddenly a face loomed over him.

Grian yelped and stumbled backward, then started laughing. It was just the miniature Iskall statue that Mumbo still kept around for some reason. Grian stood just about up to the armor stand's waist. In fact... Grian reached for the stand, using it for easy leverage to climb up onto the nearby chest and look around.

Rockets whooshed overhead. Was Mumbo back already?? Maybe he’d forgotten something. Which meant he’d be down into this room. Grian hopped down to the ground and trotted over to the nearest chest wall. He jumped, scrambled for a hold, then wedged himself deep into the gap between chests. It was a tight squeeze, even for him.

He hoped Mumbo didn’t need this particular chest. To be safe, he scooted into a vertical gap, crawling upward and further back.

Suddenly, he had popped out behind the chests. Before he could even register confusion - he hadn't realized there was enough space for him back here - he was falling, off-balance, onto the sloping edge of a hopper.

Mumbo looked up from a chest with a frown. He thought he had heard a muffled yelp, and it had sounded suspiciously like Grian's. "Hello?"

There was no reply. He must have imagined it. Mumbo shrugged and kept looking for the materials he needed.

\-----

Grian had been in chests before, just to see what it was like, but he had never before had the distinct displeasure of encountering the inside of a hopper. Chests, big and boxy with nice wooden sides, were downright cozy by comparison.

He barely had time to even recognize how unpleasant the tight metal space was before he was jostled into the next one. And the next, and the next, and so on, until he was tumbled out into a biggish stone box, still just as dark as every other space he'd just been through. After only a moment's respite, redstone clicked, and Grian was shoved out an opening into... another box, this one filled almost full with cobblestone around him.

After a jarring spacetime shift and some more jostling, Grian's box - a shulker box, he realized, being shuffled through the system - finally came to rest somewhere. Trapped amidst the tightly packed cobblestone, he couldn't make his way to the lid. Not that he'd ever tried opening a shulker box from inside before. Chests were hard enough - he wasn't sure if the box was even possible.

Plan B: transfer his mind and soul back into his human-sized body, bring that body over, and poke through Mumbo’s chests like a human would until he found the right box. Tedious, but easy enough-

Except he couldn’t transfer out. He could usually escape from chests that way, but now it wasn’t working. He was too many layers deep, he guessed, inside the box within a chest. Too much was warped around him. Now he was starting to get nervous, but he forced himself to calm enough to enter an AFK trance to pass the time. With no way out that he could see, all he could do was sit in darkness, and wait for someone to find him.

\-----

<Renthedog> Anyone else think G's been afk for longer than normal?

<Renthedog> getting a tad worried

<falsesymmetry> Mumbo's gone afk longer before

<Renthedog> yeah but G isn't Mumbo

<Renthedog> should I check on him

<Xisuma> I'll go with you, if it'll make you feel better :-)

<Renthedog> thanks X <3

\-----

Xisuma and Ren split up to search Grian's mansion, but had little luck for some time. Finally, Ren called Xisuma over.

"There's this weird cabinet in the wall, I'm not sure if I should touch it," Ren pointed out.

"Hmm." Xisuma inspected it. "Tiny bit risky, what with- well. I'd say it's worth the shot, though, don't you?"

"Alright," Ren shrugged, turning the knob. "Although I guess I don't know why he'd- augh! What the heck-"

"Oh! Goodness me!"

As Ren opened the door, a body tipped out of the closet, flopping inanimately onto Ren and knocking him to the floor. Seeing who it was, Ren scrambled frantically out from under it, eyes wide.

"Geez," Xisuma commented, holding out a hand to help Ren up, "that gave us quite the fright, didn't it? Are you alright, Ren?"

Ren didn't take the offer, still staring at the body in front of him. "Me??" he replied incredulously. "Wh- Grian's dead in front of us and you're asking if  _ I'm _ okay??"

\-----

Mumbo rolled his eyes and sighed. He needed more cobblestone. Begrudgingly, he went back to his base, grabbed the most recent shulker box in his cobble bulk storage, and returned to his build.

\-----

Another reality shift woke Grian. The stone around him had been jockeyed enough to push him near the edge of the box; using all the leverage he could get, he pried it slightly open to see where he was.

And immediately shut it again. Outside the box was nothing but intense, mind-numbing  _ nothing. _ There were the barest hints of other items suspended in the same space, but even trying to focus on those items gave his eyes no relief from the onslaught of barrenness. 

It took a minute for Grian to process what he had experienced, but he realized that “his” shulker box was now being carried in someone’s inventory - a place players were not meant to see.

\-----

Finally, all of the boxes Mumbo was going to need were laid out. He set down the last box of cobblestone and opened it to start building.

Something small and red jumped out of the box. Mumbo stumbled back in surprise.

“That was certainly an adventure,” the doll - Grian? - muttered. He looked up and around. “Oh, hi Mumbo. Where did you take- oh, is this your industrial district?”

Mumbo, dumbfounded, slowly nodded.

“Good, I know where I am, then. Thanks for getting me out of a jam!” The little Grian waved his arm and, with no further explanation, toddled off into the grass. Mumbo, too confused to follow, could only watch him leave.

\-----

“He’s not dead,” Xisuma explained, tapping at commands. “If he were, there wouldn’t be a body, would there? He would have respawned and we would have seen the message in chat.” He sighed. “Oh, and of course he doesn’t have his communicator or any tracking with him, it's too big... I should really take care of that.”

“What’s happening here, then?” Ren asked, hesitantly taking a closer look at the body in front of him. “Is this just a really convincing double, or...”

“I’m not really at liberty to say,” Xisuma replied. “But I can say that Grian is not here at the moment.”

“Alright... whoa, this  _ is _ like a double or something, I can see seams on him,” Ren noticed. “Why would he-”

The body moved, sending Ren yelping backward in fright for a second time. Grian tilted his head, confused. “Ren? X? Why am I on the floor? Did you guys move me for some reason?”

“Grian! You’re back! Safe and sound?” Xisuma exclaimed.

“Think so,” Grian reassured him. “No thanks to- well, thanks and no thanks to Mumbo.” He hopped up onto his feet and went to grab his elytra.

“Sorry about the floor thing,” Xisuma apologized. “You were out for quite a while, and Ren had the idea to check your base, and, well... we found you.”

Ren looked back and forth between the two. “Will someone please tell me what the heck is going on??”

Xisuma raised his eyebrows questioningly at Grian.

“Maybe later.” Grian shrugged the harness onto his shoulders. “I’ve got something I need to go pick up first.”


End file.
